


paint your memories in dreams

by FallenSoFar



Series: General Danvers and Supercat Week 5 - prompt responses [4]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alura In-Ze| Alura Zor-El mentioned, F/F, GDSC week 5, Nostalgia, Sleep, Unnamed Danvers children, fuzzy - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:20:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27052549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FallenSoFar/pseuds/FallenSoFar
Summary: Some things are the same, no matter how far you travel.
Relationships: Astra/Alex Danvers
Series: General Danvers and Supercat Week 5 - prompt responses [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1968907
Comments: 13
Kudos: 20
Collections: General Danvers & Supercat Week 5





	paint your memories in dreams

It’s quiet, too quiet.

Astra pushes open the door, and a frisson of tension skitters down her spine when she isn’t immediately assailed by chatter from either side. Nor is she impacted by the crash of any small, hug-seeking missiles. 

Nothing seems out of place. 

The toys scattered behind the couch are different to when she visited earlier in the week; but not, Astra thinks, out of place. Kara’s mail is in a tidy pile on the counter, and there are keys hanging on their little hooks next to the door. 

The apartment doesn’t appear to have been robbed or ransacked but, still, there is this unnatural quiet.

Astra lets her bag drop with a loud thunk, and her worry doubles itself when there isn’t even an answering ‘hello?’ from Alex, who should have beaten her here. Swallowing, she shifts on the balls of her feet and opens her senses to the rest of the building. There are four very familiar heartbeats in close proximity, drumming out a calm rhythm. So, they are here, somewhere.

‘Aunt Astra!’ The belated greeting hits her sensitised hearing like a shockwave and she only has an instant to flinch and regroup before Kara appears.

‘Little One,’ Astra accepts the hug offered by her niece and lets the previous moment of fear and adrenaline subside. However, she can’t help the ‘it’s unusually quiet’ which escapes as they part.

‘I know!’ Kara is joyful in her enthusiasm. ‘It’s like a whole new apartment. The kids are taking a nap with Aunt Alex, do you want a drink?’

Astra nods absently, attention snagged. Alex– _her_ Alex–is taking a nap in the middle of the afternoon? She could swear sometimes the human woman never stopped moving, as if she too was absorbing energy from solar rays just by her proximity to the Kryptonians.

Kara laughs, answering her unasked question with ‘it was the only way to get them to settle’. And just like that, Astra is smiling, a wave of nostalgic affection rising up to replace any lingering unease.

‘You were the same,’ she offers, ‘when you were their age.’

‘Really? I don’t remember...’ Kara’s eyes are wide and shining, and Astra senses her hesitance to ask for more. They still tiptoe around the past sometimes; too many old wounds waiting to be reopened.

These are happy memories, though, and Astra squeezes Kara’s hand gently before settling at the kitchen island to talk over a cup of the lavender tea that her niece has started keeping in the pantry just for her.

She curls her fingers around the warm mug as she remembers Alura, frazzled, trying to put Kara down to sleep and her niece–barely able to wobble on two feet–too stubborn to close her eyes when there were interesting things to see. She remembers exchanging silent glances with her sister, and yawning, wide and exaggerated. Exhausted from her trip. If only there was a bed to lay down on, and if only there was someone to have a cuddle with–did Kara know anyone like that?

Astra remembers, and she tells Kara about how she had scooped her up so many times and settled on the bed. Sometimes, Alura would be there on Kara’s other side, murmuring quiet conversation over her sleeping head. Sometimes it was just them and a stuffed toy, squashed between them in a baby deathgrip.

They laugh now, in Kara’s kitchen, as Astra recounts painstakingly lifting a young Kara’s limbs to replace her own body with a pillow, only to be called back upon reaching the door of the bedchamber. Or falling asleep herself in the cool dark room, woken later by a tiny fist being shoved in her mouth.

Then Astra’s tea is finished, and between one heartbeat and the next she misses Alura so much she can’t put it into words, so instead she asks ‘is Alex _really_ taking a nap?’

Kara smiles knowingly, and tilts her head in the direction of the main bedroom. 

That’s all the permission Astra needs.

Five steps from the bedroom door she pushes lightly into the air, floating just an inch or two from the ground. The precision move had taken weeks to master, but now comes as easily as a swooping freefall and ten times as stealthy.

Alex is a light sleeper, after all.

The door doesn’t squeak as Astra slips inside, and she leaves it open rather than try to close it carefully while hovering, having learned that mistake the hard way. The curtains are only partially closed, and a ribbon of light snakes across the room, glinting in the blonde curls of Kara’s youngest.

The toddler’s head is buried in Alex’s neck, and Astra wouldn’t be surprised to discover a spreading drool patch on her collar later. Kara’s son is curled on her other side, spine pressing into Alex’s ribs and face turned away as he clutches her arm to his chest: a living security blanket.

Alex is not sleeping.

Her eyes are closed, and her breathing is steady, but Astra knows the difference. Astra knows that when Alex really sleeps, her fingers curl in towards her palm ready to fight phantom assailants or hold tight to her dreams. Astra knows that when Alex is sleeping her tongue presses against the roof of her mouth, and she breathes through her nose in tiny huffs until her head rolls to the side. 

Alex is not sleeping, because when Alex sleeps, that tiny line of tension in her jaw never relaxes like it is now, the human woman boneless on her sister’s quilt. 

Astra inches closer.

There. There, hidden under a tangle of hair–both Alex’s and the baby’s–is the tiny glow of a transceiver. She’s tuned in to Myriad, placed the little round dot behind her ear and lent her brain to its constant calculations in return for an artificial REM cycle.

Astra thinks she’s never loved her more.

She hadn’t thought she would ever have this, after all the fighting. Hadn’t even known to dream it when Kara had been shouting in the skies; when Alex had been on the other side of a war. How could Astra have foreseen this level of trust, of love? 

And yet, here is Alex, embracing what she had once railed against. Embracing Astra, even when they are apart. Here are Kara’s two perfect babies, sleeping secure in the knowledge that they are safe and loved. Here is Kara, two rooms away, alive and vibrant. 

Here is family when five years ago Astra had none.

Outside the cozy room, the door chimes quietly and Astra knows dinner has just arrived. Kara will want them in the kitchen soon enough.

Astra looks at the bed and remembers afternoon naps with Kara, and something else, as well. Astra remembers waking up.

She smiles, and gets ready to pounce.

**Author's Note:**

> GDSC week day 6 six prompt: family
> 
> This is what I affectionately refer to as 'sleep porn' because I wish I could have some.


End file.
